Will Tatton Talking about design www.willtatton.co.nz

I spent this morning starting to design a new house on the lakefront at Taupo so I thought I'd journal the thought processes involved.

Design thinking is much easier when you've been given a real situation with a series of challenges and restrictions (or limitation – think of a more positive word!)
I don't even start wondering how I'll respond til I've got all the info I need around me – otherwise there are just too many variables. There are enough unknowns at the moment in terms of the owner's deeper needs which won't be available til later.

So first I gently circled in on the situation: got the site plans and aerial photos, council rules from the web, aerial photo and Google streetview - in short - I now know all the fixed restrictions. And while doing this I'm letting all this percolate through into my thinking without effort to make decisions or force anything. An obvious further restriction is the miles between me and my client who is in Europe!

This is important to me with design – to keep all the possibilities in the imagination as long as possible after the fixed things are learned. Not a desperate attempt to pick a solution out of thin air, but rather allowing many possibilities to filter in and jostle for attention without any being rejected too early.

During this time today, the site has become real for me and I already have a relationship with it. I've started carrying it around even in my mind, I feel grounded, I've made a new friend. I love this process. This is a beautiful place!

Photographs help with the process.

As is often the case in my design life, creative thinking like this aligns with other parts of life: I've just at lunchtime been invited down snowboarding on the weekend, so I'll now go down to the land on the way to Whakapapa with my daughter and nephew. Carrying around the site ‘in my mind' between now and then will mean I'm on the job already. I have no preconceived ideas.

Even though the owner has given me a wish list and a rough plan – I'm keeping all options open and to a certain extent resisting an influx of ideas. Maybe that's why the ideas always come – they don't like a vacuum!

The site is not facing north, so the view and sun are not easily both attainable- there's a big challenge with that one. It'll be a chilly early start, but I'm really keen to get there now and feel some imagined forms and room relationships develop in my mind in a relaxed way.

I'll let you know how it all goes next week.